New Reads This Fall From Duke Faculty

From the hidden logic affecting your motivation to the resilience of Syrian activists and a chancellor’s reflections on changes in health care, Duke writers explore a wide array of topics in their latest books.

Many of the books, including new editions of previous titles, can be found on the "Duke Authors" display shelves near the circulation desk in Perkins Library. Some are available as e-books for quick download. Most can also be purchased through the Gothic Bookshop.

[Duke Today will provide similar updates in the future. If you are a member of the Duke faculty or staff who will be publishing a book of interest to a general audience, send us a message about it along with your publisher's brief description.]

 

Lamonte Aidoo, co-editor: “Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis” New Directions in Latino American Cultures series (Palgrave Macmillan)

Aidoo, an assistant professor of Romance studies, collaborates with some of the most notable scholars in Brazilian literature and history to bring forth new critical perspectives on one of the great writers and cultural minds of 19th-century Latin America, who influenced innumerable writers and cultural talents of his generation and those that followed including Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag, Woody Allen and José Saramago.

 

William Alexander, co-author: “New Dimensions in Women’s Health” Seventh edition (Jones & Bartlett Learning)

Alexander, senior writer at the Duke Department of Neurology, has written several chapters in this new edition, which examines women’s health from the national to the individual level. Written for undergraduates, the text discusses the historic, cultural, biological and social factors that affect the health of all women and helps readers improve their own health and well-being.

Dan Ariely: “Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations” (Simon & Schuster/TED, Nov. 15, 2016)

Bestselling author Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, reveals new insights into motivation -- showing that the subject is far more complex than we ever imagined. Ariely explores questions such as: Can giving employees bonuses harm productivity? Why is trust so crucial for successful motivation? What are our misconceptions about how to value our work? How does your sense of your mortality impact your motivation?

Edward J. Balleisen: “Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff” (Princeton University Press, Dec. 2016)

By tracing how Americans have struggled to foster a vibrant economy without enabling a corrosive level of fraud, Balleisen reminds us that American capitalism rests on an uneasy foundation of social trust. Balleisen is associate professor of history and public policy and vice provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke. He is also the author of “Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America.”

 

James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins, co-authors: “Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society -- Cases & Materials: An Open Casebook” Third Edition. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

This new edition is available as a low-cost paperback or freely downloadable Open Coursebook. It includes discussions of such issues as the Redskins' trademark cancellation and the recent constitutional challenges to it, the Google Books case, the America Invents Act's changes to patent law, and the 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act, which created a new federal trade secrecy cause of action. James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the former chair of the Board of Creative Commons. Jennifer Jenkins is senior lecturing fellow at Duke Law School and the director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Kimberly Carson and Carol Krucoff, co-authors: “Relax into Yoga for Seniors:  A Six-Week Program for Strength, Balance, Flexibility, and Pain Relief” (November 2016, New Harbinger)

Carson, a health educator and yoga researcher at Oregon Health & Science University, and Krucoff, a yoga therapist at Duke Integrative Medicine, offer a guide based on their Integrative Yoga for Seniors program offered at Duke Integrative Medicine.  This program helps yoga instructors adapt the practice to older people. The book provides effective yoga practices to help relieve a variety of age-related ailments and lead to greater flexibility, balance and overall well-being.

 

Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffit, contributors: “Scientists Making a Difference: One Hundred Eminent Behavioral and Brain Scientists Talk about Their Most Important Contributions.” (Cambridge University Press)

The book is a collection of first-person narratives from leading psychological scientists. Caspi and Moffitt, both professors of psychology and neuroscience, focus on their longitudinal cohort research and the demands, care, maintenance and dedication such work entails.

 

John M. Clum: “Terrence McNally and Fifty Years of American Gay Drama” (Cambria Press)

Clum, professor of English and professor of the practice of drama, examines McNally's work in relation to the political movements of the 1960s and the history of gay men in New York during the early years of gay liberation, the age of AIDS, and the new reality of gay marriage and families.

miriam cooke: “Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience and the Syrian Revolution” (Routledge, Nov. 25, 2016).

cooke, a professor of Arab cultures, traces the first four years of the Syrian revolution and the activists’ creative responses to physical and emotional violence.

 

Ingrid Daubechies, editor and contributor: “Reunited: An Art Historical and Digital Adventure” (Duke University in collaboration with the North Carolina Museum of Art)

Daubechies, the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering, brings together scholars who describe their contributions to an exhibition reuniting, for the first time in more than 100 years, the eight known panels of the 14th-century Italian altarpiece by Francescuccio Ghissi, depicting Jesus' crucifixion and scenes in the life of St.  John the Evangelist. Daubechies colleague Rujie (Rachel) Yin, a Ph.D. student in the applied mathematics program, also contributed to this essay collection.

 

Thomas F. DeFrantz, co-editor: “Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion” (Palgrave Macmillan)

DeFrantz, professor and chair of African and African American Studies, has helped to assemble 18 scholars who show how dance can challenge our thoughts and feelings about our own and other cultures, our emotions and prejudices, and our sense of public and private space.

 

Neil De Marchi, co-editor: “Economizing Mind, 1870-2015” (Nov. 2016, Duke University Press)

Co-editors De Marchi, Duke professor emeritus of economics, and Marina Bianchi, professor of economics at the University of Cassino, collect scholars reflecting on the “episodic contact” between psychology and economics beginning in the late 19th century. Contributors, including professor emeritus of economics Craufurd D. Goodwin and professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience John Staddon, help explain why meaningful, sustained joint inquiry eluded both disciplines for so long.

 

Frances Hasso, co-editor and contributor: “Freedom Without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions” (Duke University Press, Oct. 2016)

Hasso’s book is based on a December 2013 Duke workshop, “Geographies of Gender in the Arab Revolutions,” supported by a Carnegie Corporation grant to the Duke Islamic Studies Center’s Transcultural Islam Project. As the 2011 uprisings in North Africa reverberated across the Middle East, a diverse cross section of women and girls publicly disputed gender and sexual norms in novel, unauthorized and often shocking ways. Essays include discussions of the blogs written by young women in Egypt, the Women2Drive campaign in Saudi Arabia, the reintegration of women into the public sphere in Yemen, the sexualization of female protesters encamped at Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout, and the embodied, performative, and artistic spaces of Morocco's 20 February Movement. Hasso is associate professor of women's studies and sociology.

 

Fredric Jameson: Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality (Verso)

Jameson, the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke and a master of literary theory, takes on the master of the detective novel. Jameson interprets Raymond Chandler’s work by reconstructing both the context in which it was written and the social world it projects.

 

Fredric Jameson: An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army (Verso)

Jameson’s essay “An American Utopia,” questioning standard leftist notions of what constitutes an emancipated society, is debated by leading writers, including Kathi Weeks, a professor in the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. Jameson’s text triggers a debate on the alternatives to global capitalism.

 

Satti Khanna, translator: "A Life Misspent" by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala (Harper Perennial)

Satti Khanna, an associate professor of the practice in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, teaches Indian Cinema and Modern Hindi Literature. He interprets the lives and works of contemporary Indian writers to an international audience through a series of documentary films and translations. “A Life Misspent,” set in pre-Independence India, is as much the account of an unlikely friendship as it is a coming-of-age story by the first modern Hindi poet of India.

Peter Klopfer, co-author: “Darwin and the First Grandfather: A Story of Evolution” (CreateSpace Independent Publishing)

Emeritus biology professor Peter Klopfer and his daughter Erika Honoré have co-written this children's book (for ages 6-10) on how Darwin formulated his theories about evolution and natural selection. The book is illustrated by local printmaker Gretchen Morrissey.

 

Kenneth C. Land, Eric Stallard, co-authors: “Biodemography of Aging: Determinants of Healthy Life Span and Longevity” (Springer)

Based on a full decade of research, this book adds to our understanding of the links between aging and human health. Anatoliy I. Yashin and Eric Stallard are research professors in the Social Science Research Institute.  Kenneth C. Land is a professor of sociology. All three co-authors are co-directors of the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit at SSRI.

 

Benjamin C. Lee: “Datacenter Design and Management: A Computer Architect’s Perspective” (Morgan & Claypool)

Lee, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, surveys datacenter research from a computer architect's perspective, addressing challenges in applications, design, management, server simulation and system simulation. The book is written for first- or second-year graduate students in computer architecture and may be helpful for those in computer systems.

 

Neil McWilliam, co-editor: “Histoires sociales de l'art. Une anthologie critique” (“Social History of Art. A Critical Anthology”) 2 vols. (Les Presses du réel, Dijon)

Neil McWilliam, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Art & Art History at Duke, is the co-editor of this survey of work by European and American art historians, aimed at understanding the production of visual art as a socially grounded phenomenon. The two volumes bring together more than 30 classic texts, written between 1930 and 2000, presented by some of the leading figures in contemporary art history.

 

Natalia Mirovitskaya, co-author: “Development Strategies and Inter-Group Violence: Insights on Conflict-Sensitive Development” (Palgrave Macmillan)

Mirovitskaya, an associate professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy, draws on cases from all developing regions to examine how various development strategies provoke or help prevent intrastate violence.

 

Daniel Moseley, co-editor: “Philosophy and Psychiatry: Problems, Intersections and New Perspectives” (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group)

In this book’s first part, philosophers write five lead essays with replies from psychiatrists. In the second part, this arrangement is reversed. Daniel Moseley, a philosopher who co-founded and coordinates the UNC-Chapel Hill Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry Research Group, is currently a postdoctoral fellow in a joint Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill program in mental health research.

 

John W. Payne and Jack B. Soll, contributors: “The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making” 2 vols. (Wiley-Blackwell)

Payne, a Fuqua professor of business administration, and Soll, an associate professor, are co-authors along with a colleague at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania of “A User's Guide to Debiasing,” a chapter in this examination of the theory, concepts, methodological approaches and applications in the burgeoning field of judgment and decision making.

 

Arlie O. Petters and Xiaoying Dong, co-authors: “An Introduction to Mathematical Finance with Applications” (Springer)

Petters, Benjamin Powell Professor of Mathematics, physics and business administration and dean of academic affairs for Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, and Dong, an adjunct assistant professor of mathematics who has been a professional trader for more than 20 years, have collaborated on this book that aims to fill the gap between texts that offer a theoretical treatment without many applications and those that present and apply formulas without appropriately deriving them.

 

Jacques Pierre: “Kite Kè M Pale” (Let My Heart Speak) (Torchflame Books)

In his latest collection, poet and Haitian language professor Jacques Pierre uses his poetry not only to showcase the beauty and richness of the Kreyòl language but also as a poignant reminder of the issues facing his home country.

 

Sumathi Ramaswamy: “Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation” (Marg Foundation of Mumbai)

Ramaswamy, a professor of history and international comparative studies, focuses on a series of paintings by Maqbool Fida Husain, postcolonial India's most iconic modernist and also arguably its most playful. Husain’s works offered a postcolonial commentary on the Raj. Ramaswamy presents a fresh reading of these paintings, not only demonstrating how important visual evidence is for our understanding of the past but also offering new ways of thinking about the possible range of responses to British rule in India.

 

Tom Rankin, foreward contributor: “The South in Color” by William Ferris (UNC Press)

A foreword by Tom Rankin, professor of visual studies and former director of Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, provides insight into Ferris’ work. “The South in Color” completes an informal trilogy of the UNC history professor’s documentation of the South’s tumultuous 20th century.

 

Jerome H. Reichman, co-author: “Governing Digitally Integrated Genetic Resources, Data, and Literature: Global Intellectual Property Strategies for a Redesigned Microbial Research Commons” (Cambridge University Press)

Reichman, the Bunyan S. Womble Professor of Law, examines the scientific community’s responses to obstacles blocking the use of genetic information for public research. The authors propose a blueprint for an international research commons that would promote access to and exchange of scientific data.

 

Carlos Rojas, co-editor: “The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures” (Oxford University Press)

Rojas, an associate professor of Chinese cultural studies, women's studies, and arts of the moving image, presents topics including popular culture in Late Qing China, “Zhang Guangyu's Journey to the West in Cartoons,” writings of Southeast Asian migrants in Taiwan, the Chinese Anglophone novel, and depictions of HIV/AIDS in Chu T'ien-wen's “Notes of a Desolate Man.“ Rojas also translated “Marrow” and “The Explosion Chronicles” by Man Booker International finalist Yan Lianke.

Dr. Ralph Snyderman: “A Chancellor’s Tale: Transforming Academic Medicine” (Nov. 4, 2016, Duke University Press)

The story of Dr. Snyderman's career, including 15 years as chancellor of the Duke University Medical Center, shines a light on leadership, organization, planning, and innovation in a medical and academic environment while highlighting the systemic changes in academic medicine and American health care over the last half century. Among his achievements, Snyderman led ambitious institutional growth in research and clinical care, broadened clinical research and collaborations between academics and industry, and spurred the fields of integrative and personalized medicine.

 

J. E. R. Staddon: “Adaptive Behavior and Learning” Second Edition. (Cambridge University Press)

Every day at about 4:30, Jazz, a Hungarian Vizsla dog, leaps up on the sofa and looks out for his owner who always comes home at 5:00. He doesn't need an internal clock because he has an acute sense of smell that allows him to measure how long his master has been absent. Staddon, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and a professor of biology and neurobiology emeritus, explores the evolution, development and processes of learning in animals. This edition features new accounts of several phenomena, expanded chapters on choice behavior and new chapters on classical conditioning theories and comparative cognition.